Former NY Mets player is a sneaky good free agent and match to return to Queens

David Stearns seems to have certain limits with starting pitchers. This offseason, no one seems to be worth more than three years. If you have a qualifying offer penalty attached to you, you’re less intriguing, too. This can have the New York Mets passing over some of the best free agents out there.

Oddly enough, one of the sneakiest and best free agents who fits the Mets like a glove is an ex. Chris Bassitt turns 37 in February and is coming off of a 3.96 ERA season where he made 31 starts and a relief appearance. Excellent in the postseason for the Toronto Blue Jays out of the bullpen, Bassitt somehow manages to fit in ideally with what the Mets are looking to add to their rotation.

And check out those projected stats. With a projected 2.1 fWAR, he’s right there behind Nolan McLean and Clay Holmes. The difference with Bassitt is he has four straight years of 170+ innings. The Mets could use that.

No free agent starting pitcher might be a better match for the Mets than Chris Bassitt

In a perfect world, the Mets add two starting pitchers. One comes via free agency. The other is a trade. This does remove a pair of current starters from the staff. More than likely, this requires them to trade Kodai Senga and David Peterson. The team was clearly frustrated with both at the end of the 2025 season. Senga has had difficulty staying healthy and tanked when he returned from the IL. Peterson ran out of gas and there’s nothing to suggest he’ll manage to get through a full year in 2026. Plus, he’s a free agent.

On a two-year deal, Bassitt is ideal for the Mets. Even if those innings totals slide down and his ERA creeps up a little bit, the Mets are getting a productive innings eater who brings his own plate to the buffet.

He wasn’t bulletproof in his three years with the Blue Jays. Worth -0.1 bWAR in 2024, it was a much less impressive performance than year one in 2023 up in Toronto when he finished tenth in the Cy Young vote. 

Bassitt has been a strange pitcher when you consider his FIP, an estimator of ERA. He had a 3.60 ERA in 2023 but a 4.28 FIP. The next season, with a 4.16 ERA, he had a 4.08 FIP. Last year they were, at 3.96 and 4.01, suggesting Bassitt was no longer lucky or unlucky.

Reunions with old players are often strange. This one is different. The Mets roster is almost entirely changed from when Bassitt last pitched in New York back in 2022. No suggested rumor that this is a direction the Mets want to head. The tightly-sealed intentions of the Mets this offseason continue to have us speculate rather than anticipate.